The Legend of Diablo

Chapter 3-3

“Javier.”

Yani stood below him in the church tower. He climbed down. “What are you doing here? It’s not safe. Certainly not in your condition.” The baby would be here any day now.

“The council has gathered. They are planning a counterattack. You have to stop them.”

Javier snapped, “You should not be meddling in the men’s affairs, wife.”

Her eyes blazed with anger. “That is right. I am your wife. And this is your child. But if you allow the men to open the gates, you may see the end of us…of all of this.”

But if they didn’t do anything, the people would eventually starve, or be driven mad with fear by the long, amplified diatribes meant to demoralize them. Descriptions of what would be done to the men, women, and children of the “illegal” town were softened with empty promises of how anyone who surrendered would be treated well. It had already been six days, and his people were starting to grow desperate.

He went down the stairs, helping Yani along, though she slapped his hands away when he tried to curve an arm around her thick waist. As they reached the ground level, Fernando looked up. His lips pursed tightly, and he looked away again.

“Go back to the other women,” Javier told Yani sternly. “Do not interfere with me again.”

She left in a huff.

“We cannot continue like this,” Fernando said as Javier joined them. “We need to launch a counterattack.”

“What about Abzavine?” one of the men demanded. “Where is our guardian angel? If he is so powerful and benevolent, why hasn’t he interceded?”

Javier clenched his fists. “He has sworn an oath to protect El Diablo only. He cannot interfere in mortal affairs.”

“He will not have anything left to protect if he doesn’t come down from his mountain and help us.” Fernando gripped the edge of the table. “Any day now, their cannons will arrive, and then nothing will stop them from breaking down the door.”

“The terrain is too rough to transport cannons and cannonballs,” Javier reasoned. Of course, he couldn’t be certain the army wouldn’t have figured out how to do just that.

Fernando huffed. “Javier, the barrier is tied to your life. All it would take is a stray bullet or an assassin’s knife. If you’re hurt, we will be defenseless. If you want to save us, you need to show Duarte and everyone else you are not a sorcerer to be trifled with. You must use El Diablo.”

Javier set his jaw. “I cannot. After that first time…” He didn’t like to think about it. He’d fired the weapon in fear and anger, killing a soldier who’d wandered from his troop and gotten lost. Javier had mistaken him for a scout—a spy—and had dispatched him with too much haste.

And he’d paid the price. Oh, how he’d paid. The mage gun had torn a year off his life, swallowed a piece of his soul like a mouthful of sweet water after a long drought. The agony of it had him vowing to never use the thing again. And yet El Diablo’s bloodlust had only just awoken. She whispered to him even in dreams, singing a seductive siren’s song of death and destruction.

Fernando’s nostrils flared. “What good is this symbol of your power if you refuse to use it? I did not help you gather all those…those infernal materials for the spell so that you could stand by and do nothing!”

His friend’s voice burned like acid. Javier didn’t want to admit his weakness to the others. He hadn’t told anyone about the blood price: the truth was, he was ashamed of his creation. This weapon was an abomination. Hubris bound in wood and iron and dark magic. He should have known that building the mage gun would have consequences.

Even now, the demon within yearned to prove itself, to show off its abilities, daring him to test its powers against the men threatening his home, his friends and family.

He’d never anticipated how insistent that little voice could be.

A loud boom shook the air, and Javier collapsed to his knees, the air knocked from his lungs. It felt as though his whole skeleton had been rattled. He stared up at the council wide-eyed. “That was no battle spell.”

Everyone ran outside.

Fire spread across a swath of the houses, their roofs collapsed. Women and children screamed and ran, while others hurriedly formed bucket lines to put the flames out.

“Cannons?”

“No.” Fernando pointed at the wall. A large chunk of it had been knocked over, and the perfect V of the collapsed portion framed a catapult set among the troops.

“How did we not see that?” Fernando growled, his annoyance clearly aimed at his magically gifted friend.

“They must have been building it under a hide spell.” That was surely why the sorcerers had been bombarding them continuously—to distract him from any other subtle magic activity. He cursed. Cannons and cannon fodder were difficult to move, but a medieval siege engine could be transported in pieces and reconstructed on the field.

A shout went up, and the arm suddenly flung a second flaming payload. Javier planted his feet and stabbed his fingers into the ground, drawing power up from the earth.

The fireball crashed against the barrier, its flaming core of pitch-soaked iron scraps penetrating and slamming into another row of houses. Javier reeled back and landed hard in the dirt, head spinning. He felt like he’d been kicked by a mule.

“Javier!” Fernando was at his side in an instant. “Are you all right?”

He shook off the ache singing in his skull. Screams rang out around him. He touched his brow, and his shaking fingers came away wet with blood.

Release me, Diablo whispered. Unleash me.

He clenched his teeth. His friend was right: Duarte and everyone else who sought to control him had to learn he was not a sorcerer to be trifled with. But there were hundreds of soldiers out there—how could he stop them all without paying the blood price?

“I need to root myself, shore up the barrier, while the men take out that catapult before it does any more damage.”

“The moment we open the gates, the army will rush in.”

He looked at the V in the wall. “We have to stop that catapult,” he whispered again, holding his breath.

Javier waited, counting on his friend’s hesitancy to save his life. Javier did not want to be the one to hand him his death. But…

Fernando made a frustrated noise. “If you will not do what is needed, then give Diablo to me and I will lead the charge!”

Javier swallowed. “Fernando…you don’t understand…”

“You need to protect Yani,” he said angrily. “You promised not to run away again.”

“I’m not.”

“Hiding here is just as bad. You made Diablo to protect us, but it cannot fire itself. Killing is not work for sorcerers like you. It’s for soldiers like me.” He held his hand out. “If you won’t wield the devil’s own revolver, then let me do it for you.”

The relief that only cowards could feel in surrender slid through him as he slipped the mage gun into his friend’s hand. “End this,” he said. As it left his palm, a tingling crept up his arm. And then the weight of it left him, the voice that whispered and hummed suddenly silent.

Fernando’s eyes went wide. His grip spasmed over Diablo. The weapon molded to his hand and, like a flower, blossomed and transformed. The barrel doubled and lengthened, the grip curved. It had become a different gun, one that suited Fernando.

“Dios.” His friend marveled at the newly formed weapon.

Another blast of battle magic rocked the town, and Javier braced himself.

“Go,” Javier directed. “I will hold the barrier and cover you as best as I can.”

He watched his best friend go, taking his little devil with him. Shame funneled through him; he should have told Fernando about the blood price, about the dangers of using the mage gun. He had to take it back before Fernando used it and found out how he’d been betrayed.

But before he could call out to him, another blast from the catapult crashed through the wall, and Javier was knocked backward.

When he came to, the catapult was a pile of ash, the army had been decimated…and his friend was gone.